Mickey Mantle, Great Yankee Slugger, Dies at 63

Published: August 14, 1995

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"Everything he owned was in a straw suitcase," he said. "No money, none of those $400 suits he got around to buying a couple of years later. Just those two pairs of pastel slacks and that blue sports coat that he wore every place.

"Years later, we were sitting around the dining room at the Yankees' ball park in Fort Lauderdale, and they had this oilcloth on the table, and Mickey said: 'This is what we used to have in our kitchen at home. We didn't even have chairs then; we had boxes instead of chairs, and linoleum on the floor. And when it got cold, the draft would raise the linoleum up at the ends.' "

Mantle was so insecure that he remembered later how he had ducked DiMaggio, even though he was playing his final season in center field and Mantle, who had been converted from shortstop to the outfield, was playing alongside him in right.

"Joe DiMaggio was my hero," Mantle said, "but he couldn't talk to me because I wouldn't even look at him, although he was always nice and polite." Trip Back to Minors In First Year in Majors

Two months into the 1951 season, Manager Casey Stengel sent Mantle down to the Yankees' top farm team in Kansas City because he was striking out too much. Against Walt Masterson of the Boston Red Sox he struck out five times in one game. He stayed in the minors for 40 games, returned to New York and closed his rookie season hitting .267 with 13 home runs in 96 games.

"Then in the World Series in 1951," Mantle said, "I tripped on the water-main sprinkler in the outfield while I was holding back so DiMaggio could catch a ball that Willie Mays hit, and I twisted my knee and got torn ligaments. That was the start of my knee operations. I had four.

"Once, they operated on my shoulder and tied the tendons together. I had a cyst cut out of my right knee another time. And down in Baltimore in 1963, Slick was pitching one night and Brooks Robinson hit a home run over the center-field fence. I jumped up and tried to catch it, and got my foot caught in the wire mesh on the fence, and that time I broke my foot about halfway up."

He became one of the damaged demigods of sport, but he played with such natural power that he remained the key figure on a team achieving towering success for the fifth straight decade.

His strength as a hitter became legendary. In 1953, batting right-handed, he hit a ball thrown by Chuck Stobbs of the Washington Senators over the 55-foot-high left-field fence in Griffith Stadium, a drive that was measured at 565 feet from home plate. Three years later, and again in 1963, batting left-handed each time, he smashed a ball into the third deck, within a few feet of the peak of the facade in right field in Yankee Stadium, and no one has come closer to driving a fair ball out of the park.

In 1956, he hit 16 home runs in May. In 1964, he hit two home runs in his final two times at bat on July 4, and two more in his first two times up in the next game the following day. In 1956, he hit three home runs in the World Series, three more in the 1960 Series and three more in the 1964 Series, running his total to 18 and breaking Ruth's record.

"Casey Stengel was like a father to me," Mantle said. "Maybe because I was only 19 years old when I started playing for him, and a couple of years later my own dad was gone. The Old Man really helped me a lot. I guess he even protected me. But I still didn't have it in my head that I was a good major league ballplayer.

"Then Ralph Houk came along and changed my whole idea of thinking about myself. I still didn't have a lot of confidence. Not till Houk came along and told me, 'You are going to be my leader. You're the best we've got.' "

After Leaving Baseball, Day and Night Drinking

The Yankees stopped winning pennants after the 1964 season, and Mantle stopped playing after the 1968 season. He remembered later what it was like: "When I first retired," he wrote in an article in Sports Illustrated in 1994, "it was like Mickey Mantle died. I was nothing. Nobody gave a damn about Mickey Mantle for about five years."

By then, he reported, he was living in a steady haze induced by all-day and all-night drinking.

"When I was drinking," he said, "I thought it was funny -- the life of the party. But as it turned out, nobody could stand to be around me. I was the best man at Martin's wedding in 1988, and I can hardly remember being there." Martin died in a one-vehicle accident on Christmas night 1989. He was legally drunk at the time.

Mantle admitted that drinking had become a way of life even while he was playing. But it finally became a nightmare that undermined his life. And at the request of his son Danny and Pat Summerall, the former football player and current television broadcaster, he checked into the Betty Ford Center in 1994.

He remembered what his doctor told him then: "Your liver is still working, but it has healed itself so many times that before long you're just going to have one big scab for a liver. Eventually, you'll need a new liver. I'm not going to lie to you: The next drink you take may be your last."

There was no next drink, Mantle said. And after leaving the Betty Ford Center, he seemed to be a revived person.

"Everywhere I go," he said, "guys come up and shake hands and say, 'Good job, Mick.' It makes you feel good. It's unbelievable. They give a damn now."

In addition to his wife and son David, he is survived by two other sons, Danny and Mickey Jr.

Funeral services are scheduled for 2 P.M. Tuesday at Lovers Lane United Methodist Church in Dallas.

Photos: Mickey Mantle at All-Star Game festivities last year in Pittsburgh. (Reuters) (pg. A1); A powerful switch-hitter, Mickey Mantle blasted 536 home runs, eighth on the career list. This right-handed homer came on a pinch-hit on Aug. 4, 1963. (Louis Requena); In his career, Mantle hit home runs from both sides of the plate in the same game 10 times for an American League record. (Louis Requena) (pg. B7) Chart lists Mickey Mantle's baseball statistics, his milestones and career highlights (pg. B7)